« Noviembre 2004 | Main | Julio 2005 »
Diciembre 20, 2004
Someone Seized by the Holy Spirit
Macht has a great post on the personal beginnings of the neocalvinist. Look Here The discussion on Strauss's site has moved from impacting broader culture to a focus on the church. I have been thinking - and agree with Macht - that it needs to start at the personal.
Posted by rob at 04:15 PM | TrackBack
15 Years ago Today
I had just finished semester exams and was settling for a lazy game of Rook with guys in the dorm - planning to while away a few hours and shake off the weight of heavy thinking - when the phone rang.
My mother - from Ecuador - saying dad had a massive heart attack on the last day of his visit to Mexico City and that he hadn't survived.
That was 15 years ago, 5479 days ago. It was the last time I thought about what I was going to ask my dad on our Christmas break. Life since then has been rich, full of education, mission, marriage and family. But it has all been different - far different than it would have been had dad survived Mexico City.
The carol says it well: "Tidings of comfort and Joy" For those whose Christmas is full of mixed emotions, may God bring both Comfort and Joy this year.
Posted by rob at 04:04 PM | TrackBack
Diciembre 17, 2004
What is the purpose of this blog? And why the dearth of writing
Some see a blog as a personal journal, where they publish a very personal sort of writing. This is not me - plenty of what I write should never be seen, even by the 5 or 6 visitors who might someday come here. Others see a blog as the place to chart their internet exploring. I’m not sure anyone else is interested in the particular arrangement of things I read on a daily basis so I won’t bore you with the links or task my self with recording them. If I was an arbiter of what should be seen on the internet this might have some value, but I’m not – and I’m fine with that. The only reason I do document any pieces I read is because I want to document their importance and remind myself of their location.
I conceive of this blog as the location of my public writing, as though I were a columnist with a daily responsibility to publish some interesting and well written thinking for the consuming public. So the items I write here are seen as having some purpose, some importance beyond just being interesting to me. If I’m not thinking on this level, if I’m not going to write.
Frankly my intellectual and spiritual energy in the last 3 months has been focused on the Sonship material, a fairly intensive grappling with the failure of my personal discipleship. I hope that plenty of public reflection will eventually emerge from this study – but so far, it has been too close to be able to write very intelligently about it.
Posted by rob at 10:47 PM | TrackBack
What are NeoCalvinism priorities
In the ongoing thinking about NeoCalvinism - here is another good synopsis from Gideon Struass (cryptic and highly referential as usual) written in October 2002
among the more urgent needs of evangelicals in Africa, Asia, and Latin America we must count (1) a robust worldview that makes biblical sense of all of life, (2) a cultural pragmatics that does not lapse into triumphalist fantasy or defeatist cynicism, reactionary reconstructionism or deconstructionist moral whatever-ism, and (3) a progressive social philosophy to inform civilizational disclosure (see Freston).Which is exactly what neocalvinism offers.
The other Protestant big options (Reconstructionism; the Anglican cultivative tradition that draws on Chesterton, Eliot, and Lewis; the English Christian Socialism of Kingsley, Maurice, Ludlow and Headlam - of which I am personally quite fond; the anabaptist tradition as modified by Yoder and Sider - from whence I came; Lutheran Christian Realism in the manner of Niebuhr), while interesting and offering true riches of their own, are perhaps less transculturally adaptable and subtle, and lack the historical tensile strength of neocalvinism ... I would provisionally suggest.
So we neocalvinists have work to do, eh? (And being calvinists, work makes us happy. Although we don't, of course, show it. ......... Yeeeee-haah!)
My project is teasing out the needs (1-3) as well as looking at what Strauss states as alternatives, toward understanding the differences.
Posted by rob at 09:30 AM | TrackBack
Diciembre 16, 2004
The Cultural Priorities for NeoCalvinists in our Time
So Gideon Strauss drops me a line in my comments. I suspect he is seeding the conversation – hoping for a broader interaction.
Over at my blog I am wondering:"It is [...] important to have a vigorous dialogue over the medium-term cultural purposes of such a movement: How do we want to change the world? What difference do we want to make to the common life, in the public square, in service of our neighbours? How does the long-long-term messianic cause of the Reign of God - Pro Rege - translate into particular historical responsibilities in our own generation, and the next few generations?"
I would be delighted to hear what you think are the cultural priorities for neocalvinists in our time.
I guess I am still reeling from my November defeat, and still trying to work out my own position as embattled opposition to so much of what I see in what Strauss calls a “time of rising Christian cultural power, of which the new confidence of the present generation of doctrinally orthodox young people is evidence.” If the “faith and values” vote is seen as evidence that cultural change is on its way – I don’t feel much comfort. I continue to be challenged by the vision of classical political liberalism, while ashamed of its more raw contemporary libertine extreme. I continue to be leery of what I see as greed and a resistance to values present in contemporary neo-conservative politics, resistance to libertarian anti state behavior.
I’m glad that Chuck Colson and Hugh Hewitt don’t make Dr Strauss’s list of NeoCal public intellectuals – even though they fit some of the description: Individuals as having “not only a set of unconnected opinions, but a clearly articulated and consistent point of view. And this point of view cannot be uncommitted on the issues of the day […], but must promote a cause of some kind - a vision for the renewal (or preservation) of culture”. Mine is simply a much different vision for the renewal of that culture, a vision that seems to have so much credibility within the new generation of the orthodox young.
I am also somewhat inured to the whole Neo-Calvinist super-heroes notion because I’m not looking for large culture wide changes. I’m looking for change in my neighborhood and in my church. I realized several years ago that I did not desire an audience of influence any wider than the local church. At one point my vision had been the public intellectual, the academic or the journalist – but when I became an elder – I realized that the only audience I wanted was local. I guess that having a neo-calvinist who regularly wrote columns for the NYT or appeared on the talk show circuit would be nice – but I don’t think it would change the course of battle in the neighborhood where I live.
But practically - what sort of cultural priorities should the neocalvinist have in our neighborhoods and in our churches? What does it mean to continue living reformationally in constant interaction both with the texts that are our world and our word. Several items come to mind.
- Cross Cultural Contextualization: I want my church to be able to speak to the varied folk within our culture. People of different race and different hair color. I want the gospel to be spoken into the breath of culture that our country is beginning to represent. I don’t want to hide behind a “Christian America” or believe that middle class values must be normative – yet I want to bring the reformational values of the gospel into interaction with the breadth of cultural expression our country has become.
- Justice: I want a church to be engaged politically with the cause of the oppressed. This usually takes place in very local means in the context of diaconal ministry and concern for the poor. But in my mind it means approaching my political decisions taking the benefit of the impoverished as primary. This has two very significant macro political implications for me. I will not be party to the ownership culture that is being implemented in this country because of its removal of a safety net for the poor. Secondly I will not be party to the abandon of a constraining function of government on the greed and ruthless depersonalization that is the contemporary corporation. See David Koyzis on this.
- Care for the Earth: I am not a “love your mother” sort of tree hugger – but I do believe that part of truly reformational understanding of the interaction between this world and the new world is that we must care for this world. We must not be party to the wanton destruction of this world. We must not live as though our being here is temporary and insignificant. (Thanks to N.T. Wright on exposing the fallacies of the Left Behind series).
I’m sure much is left out of this discussion, and maybe I fall victim to what Mr Stegall critiques about Charlie Peacock - that I'm talking more about a "post-modern emerging lifestyle evangelicalism that is not rooted in anything remotely resembling historical Protestantism or remotely partaking of its historical resources." More study to be done.
Posted by rob at 10:35 PM | TrackBack
Diciembre 06, 2004
Reading for the Day
Two articles appeared in the past month on the Emergent church. I continue to be attracted to this movement, and yet be concerned by exactly what these articles point out - an overall concern for style over radical theological reflection.
The Emergent Matrix in ChristianCentury. Good discussion of moving beyond the evangelical / mainline / catholic distinction.
Emergent Mystique in Christianity Today. Andy Crouch exposes the hair culture of the emergent church. (And this from the founder of Re:Generation quarterly!)
Posted by rob at 04:41 PM | TrackBack
Diciembre 02, 2004
Antonio on the Snow
Last week we drove to Illinois to eat turkey with the in-laws. The kids had been excited that they might see snow since we were driving north. Marialice had very carefully explained that it was not winter yet - still just fall - and that they should not expect snow yet.
As we drove north, it was raining, and in mid-state Illinois the rain turned to snow, and then to a blizzard. It took us 4 hours to drive the last 100 miles. We saw approximately 50 cars and trucks in the ditch during that time. While the driving was tedious, the kids reaction was priceless. Antonio said, "So this is only fall?"
What's winter like.....
Posted by rob at 08:17 AM | TrackBack